it's the seeger report the cia doesn't want you to see details about the enhanced interrogation tactics used on terrorist suspects six thousand pages of u.s. military secrets that cody elude the public eye indefinitely and had a report from capitol hill and speaking of secrets wal-mart has a few of its own the company shelled out millions to lobby for the government to roll back regulations that's also good at keeping scandals quiet coming up a look at wal-mart's big business blitz. and putting a face to the afghan war a select u.n. committee has asked me to that hundreds of afghan teens were held in a military prison many of them under the age of sixteen and seized from their homes

are to questions why these youth were held without being charged with any crimes. it's tuesday december eleventh eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r.t.e. . we begin today with a report that could shed some light on the dark practice of torture and this week the senate intelligence committee is said to vote on a report that details the use of enhanced interrogation techniques under the bush administration now this includes everything from stress positions to waterboarding much of it said to have happened at the guantanamo bay prison the roughly six thousand page report has been in the works for three years now the senate is finally voting to approve it but according to senator dianne feinstein who has the committee of the public may never see it for more on what's in the report i was joined earlier from capitol hill by r t political correspondent christine. one of

the central goals of the reported to find out the extent to which these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques led to valuable information led these intelligence officers officers to information that in turn led them to terrorists and a lot of those are inside of you i have spoken on the condition of anonymity have said it's not much that these enhanced interrogation methods really were not that effective in leading to any information as much as it may have produced good bits of information here and there it also produced a whole lot of bad information about one of the really interesting things here live is what you mentioned and that is that this report is not fair payer funded six thousand page report may not be published anytime soon if at all what we do know is by connecting them dots we did hear earlier in the year by the chairman of the senate intelligence committee senator danforth dianne feinstein she spoke to reporters about how the report was coming along and without by one reporter if

there was a connection between these enhanced interrogation techniques and the killing and capturing of osama bin one here's their response. they have gone through more than three million e-mails cables pieces of paper. looking for this today. the answer to your question is no nothing has been found to indicate that this came out of guantanamo. as far as why this won't be released as far as some of the other things contained in this report there are a whole lot of theories out there one of the theories that whether or not the american public should be aware of this and it depends on where you fall if you think that knowledge is power is one side and the other side would be sort of ignorance. a whole lot of people operating under that i spoke to colonel morris davis yesterday about about the back of the senate intelligence committee would

most likely be keeping this under wraps he is a former prosecutor at guantanamo bay left the job because he strongly disagreed with some of these techniques in the way they were being used i asked him why he thought this report was being tested and here's his response. i think a lot of these cases is not about the future harm which is always what cited national security's in jeopardy and if we tell you know what's going on it will impact future operations for more often than not it's just trying to hide the embarrassment of what happened in the past because this investigation has been going on for three years and was looking back at policies that were ended a number of years ago so this is not a an ongoing future operation it's past history but i think there may be some embarrassment people would like to keep. so again this is just one theory one person but it is one. worth taking a look at enhanced interrogation is one word for things that you mentioned waterboarding sleep deprivation this is called by

a whole lot of other people simply torture and a lot of people look at this period in our history as one of the darkest pictures that came from abu ghraib and guantanamo bay these are things that a lot of people do want to be want to keep hidden and want to be forgotten about. and that is why people wanted to have this investigation into what exactly has transpired at these places but not everybody. i was on board with this can you tell us why republicans were opposed to the investigation into torture. yeah it's really interesting so putting together this report actually spoke about the really years and one of the reasons it took so long is because senate republicans stopped cooperating with the investigation many of them boycotted it overall they said that it wasn't necessary or they said that it couldn't be done because of so many other investigations going on now now they really back out back

in two thousand and nine during this time investigators under the obama justice department gave the green light for a separate investigation that's separate investigation with the criminal investigation into whether or not what the cia was doing with some of these these methods they were using whether they could face criminal charges now that case was closed and no criminal charges fire filed so it's really interesting but i'll be honest was it's not just all republicans president obama himself the less than enthusiastic about sort of looking at criminal aspects under the former president george w. bush a lot of the thought process here is we want to leave this in the past and try to move forward on the president obama did upon becoming president outlaw many of these methods as you may remember and so they don't shoot to you know to look at it a lot of republicans echo the what members of the bush administration said at the time especially vice president dick cheney that baby leave that these methods were

effective particularly in the waterboarding of collegiate mohammad however i do want to point out going to john mccain disagreed here's what he said about it. many advocates of these techniques of asserted their use of armed terrorists in our custody particularly khalid sheikh muhammad revealed the trail to bin ladin. the former attorney general of the united states michael mcconnell she recently claimed and i quote the intelligence that led to bin laden began with a disclosure from khalid sheikh mohammed who broke like a damn wonder the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. that is false. so again locally signal hammad believed to be water boarded one hundred eighty three times there are some officials who say that some information did come from him about that

courier in pakistan but that that information came much later than any of these enhanced interrogation tactics were used interesting chris thanks for staying on top of this the story that was christine for that at the capitol our chief political correspondent. well as the u.s. aims to wind down the wars abroad new details are coming out about those detained the u.s. held more than two hundred afghans teenagers this is according to you as report to the united nations authorities say they were captured in conflict with al qaeda and held a facility near bob graham air force base for about a year the average age sixteen years old that means many of those detained are likely younger the reason the teens are held according to the report is to prevent a calm come that and from returning to the battlefield earlier today i spoke with r.t. correspondent understand theater going to from new york and she brought us more on the teens who were captured. for the last several years what has been going on is

over two hundred afghan teenagers that were captured a detained as a result of the fight against the taliban and al qaeda in afghanistan and held at a u.s. military prison. air base and the shocking numbers here are that the age of these people was on average sixteen years old sixteen year old kids and like you rightfully say the concern here is that a lot of them were a lot younger we're talking about twelve thirteen fourteen year old kids held for an average of a year and curiously in many of these cases we're talking about brothers here who are sitting at a home and just captured on detained and taken into this military prison because there are so expect it of being an enemy combatants and in many cases it's important to underline here that these teenagers were not wearing military uniforms they were not participating in combat they were just suspected of being enemy combatants and they were taken in and like you just said what the main excuse of

the main reason for this was that the u.s. says it's a preventative measure we need to do everything we can to make sure these suspected enemy combatants don't return into the battlefield and that's exactly why they were held for so long we have to say that most of the many of them have been released or transferred to the afghan government at this point but many do remain as well can you tell us what were they charged with the end were they provided any legal assistance well that's i think the most important question in the story liz is the fact that these teenagers were not charged with anything because an enemy combatant is an enemy combatant to the u.s. that is everything and according to u.s. supreme court ruling two thousand and four these people can be held for out however long a conflict is ongoing and this is exactly what happens with these teenagers in terms of legal assistance we're hearing legal experts saying what kind of legal assistant if any they got was really a joke they're saying that these afghan teenagers were allowed for example. to up

or to support in open hearings and defend themselves afghan teenagers defending themselves you know and because they're not charged with any crime whatsoever there's no mandatory rule that they need to be provided with legal assistance we do know that most of these detainees were provided a personal assistant of sorts personal legal assistance but critics are saying this is really ridiculous because these are the same people working with adult detainees when teenagers of course children really need completely different legal treatment and psychological treatment when they're worked with now what are u.s. officials saying about this how are they explaining these findings this well is the u.s. officials really are playing the same game they're saying a war is a war is a war and an enemy combatant if we're suspicious that this is somebody that could be dangerous we can hold these people for however long we want and you know they're saying that basically in line with law of armed conflict they have the right to detain anybody under you know teenager no teenager for as long as these deemed

necessary because of it's a war like we've been saying in this case it's really a preventative measure that they've been applying this is not a punishment they're not trying to punish somebody who committed a crime this is teenagers that they've been suspecting of something that they're holding for so long and it's important to claim to see here that the u.s. administration says that they held repetitive administrative hearings in order to try to figure out whether or not certain teenagers could be released earlier or held longer this was sort of supposed to be a way of treating them nicely and seeing making sure they're getting the psychological assistance that they need but again legal experts who works with these teenage afterwards or during the process say it's really all bogus now we are talking about minors kids essentially average age being sixteen so this is certainly likely to spark some criticism but our human rights groups say well of human rights group rights group are really criticizing the storm. you know

what the top of their lungs we have for example human rights watch they filed a separate report in march this year saying that the believe the number is much higher than two hundred that it's at least two hundred fifty under eighteen year old teenagers being held over the last four years other legal experts and people who've worked with detainees say they don't buy this number of several hundred teenagers two hundred as the u.s. officially claims because the numbers of people being held there are in the thousands and the reasons you know human rights groups of course are outrageous because the length of how much these teenagers are being detained for a year is a very long time because they're captured these kids without uniform not even in battlefield it's not really clear why at all they're being dragged in and there's a lot of the detainees are not even allowed to contest their age which is curious because their families can say look this is a kid but this is not allowed to happen for a long time after the capture and basically lawyers are saying look eleven twelve year old human rights groups are saying eleven twelve year olds really were going

to use this as a pretense enemy combatants to arrest kids definitely something of an outrage but of course this is something that's going on for a while so whether human rights groups voices will be heard is a big question mark here all right well now that we know this information and what happens next will this have any impact on on the way the u.s. you know its actions overseas when it comes to detaining teenagers well it's a good question liz in the short run what we're going to see happen is there's going to be a big meeting in geneva where u.n. members will continue to question the u.s. officials and the u.s. delegation on the state of affairs when it comes to treating children both at home and abroad and this is a meeting and hopefully some sort of grilling session that will take place at the end of generating beginning of february next year but you know in terms of whether or not this is going to have some sort of long term impact this is of course a big question because we've never heard the united states apologize about these

type. things before now we don't have very much time left i want to ask you very quickly looking at the bigger picture what is the state of violence in afghanistan today is it getting any better while liz that is the most important question here in the sense that you know no the answer is very simple the state of affairs is not getting better we're hearing reports from the pentagon the latest one saying that violence has been peaking this summer at over thirty five hundred strikes against u.s. troops that you know as the u.s. is trying to bring to a clause this conflict this war by twenty forty and while it's still spiking you know even as a quick example i can give you you know the green on blue attacks when we have insiders people working with allied forces with u.s. forces attacking u.s. troops because experts are saying the situation is critical and nobody's really seeing any end to that and the violence is still ongoing certainly a lot to talk about unfortunately we are at a time on a saucy i think that was our correspondent honest. and i do

a story that seems to be repeating itself another alleged shoplifter at a wal-mart store was killed by store security last friday this time it was at a wal-mart in houston shelly frey a twenty seven year old mother of two was shot by a security guard who suspected her and the two other women in the car of shoplifting she died shortly afterwards. well this is the second time in as many weeks that wal-mart security has killed an accused shoplifter and this isn't the only controversy surrounding the nation's largest retailer and two thousand and twelve alone we've seen a bribery scheme to gain a string stronger foothold in mexico a slew of worker strikes and lockouts and the deadly factory fire in bangladesh where it was discovered that wal-mart produces its clothing line despite all of that how has that affected wal-mart's profits well if you easy to overcome scandal if you've got the ear of the most powerful people in the country take a look at some of the members of wal-mart's board of directors because there are

just three of the seventeen people on wal-mart's board all of whom are movers and shakers in the world of business now these three have also been tied to numerous other top companies and government agencies over the years and don't forget a former member hillary hillary clinton while her husband was governor of arkansas this is from a new york times article back in two thousand and seven explaining how her seven years on the wal-mart board of directors continued to play a part in her life quote mrs clay and maintains close ties to wal-mart executives to the democratic party and the tightly knit arkansas business community her husband former president bill clinton speaks frequently to wal-mart's current chief executive leask jr and it's not just their board of directors wal-mart is also a founding member of an organization called business forward which is dedicated to quote help bring more business leaders into the policy making process but do we

really need more business leaders in the policy making process where earlier today i spoke with or if you produce or produce or read rachel curteous excuse me i asked her to tell us more about the organization business forward. business forward is essentially an organization designed to make sure that business leaders get the chance to speak to high level government officials and luckily for us jim doyle the president founder of business forward was on c.-span this morning so i thought it might be a good opportunity to let him explain a little bit more what he thinks business for it is what we do is we bring business leaders from around the country to brief the president is economic teams on everything from health care reform to immigration reform fiscal the fiscal cliff into. intellectual property protection and the business leaders are speaking for themselves generally speaking business leaders are centrists that are data driven they're results oriented and they are looking for compromise in washington.

so there's sensually a couple more than forty companies involved in business forward in their jobs and business ford itself is involved in coordinating all of those business leaders and making sure that they have the opportunity to speak to government officials interesting so we see some of the big players here it doesn't sound like a bad idea for businesses you know to want to have more of a say and more access to the government to kind of voice their issues they of course haven't had a big impact on the economy is there a conflict of interest is there a problem there well if you're a business leader certainly why why not have the ear of a senior white house official i entirely understand why businesses would want to form business forward and be a part of it however as as a citizen it's a little bit more alarming right i mean government should talk to big businesses like wal-mart like comcast they're affected by government regulation and certainly

they're huge employers in the country but the problem is that they already have so many opportunities to talk to the government anything from political contributions to the fact that one founding member lockheed martin you know they have lucrative government contracts a lot of these presidents and business leaders already speak in front of the house of representatives in the senate with great frequency plus they have huge lobbying arm so you know and then so what we see is that it's a bit alarming that these people have even more of an opportunity to talk to the government even more access to these senior white house officials when that's already kind of the status quo that they already have a lot of open avenues to speak to the government so and in addition you look at something like comcast that's the majority owner of n.b.c. so not only do they have the opportunity to speak to white house officials on a pretty regular basis but they also have a lot to do with the coverage of the way that government is seen by a lot of people in the country so that's why i think

a lot of times when we look at the really close relationship between government. and big business often the mainstream media isn't there alongside with us so we see that you know the big businesses that they have access paschal access to the white house and of course they can kind of push their agendas forward and advocate issues that will benefit them but sometimes not really be in the best interest of of the average joe but those interests be at odds yeah i think that's a great question so for instance the citizens for tax justice so that twenty six major companies in two thousand and eleven actually paid negative tax rates in two thousand and eleven that's i mean you know negative tax rates i mean i pay what thirty five percent i know that my taxes are way higher and i make a lot less money than save arising who pay negative taxes so i think that it is definitely important as you said for these businesses to be able to talk to the government but you know these employers certainly have different perspective

sabin their employees are than other people in the country who already because they don't live in washington d.c. because they don't have that much money because they might not even be attuned to government processes. they're just kind of left out in the dark so if people don't know what the fiscal cliff is how can they best advocate for what they need from senior white house officials it just becomes way too difficult for them and then it becomes more of an echo chamber for people in washington d.c. these white house officials think oh there's a very broad consensus on what we need in terms of tax rates just because they've spoken to fifty people but if all fifty people are business leaders then they're not getting that much diversity of opinion interesting so this high powered group of business forward can you tell us what exactly they are advocating sure so jim doyle c.-span went into this a little bit this morning if we want to show that. given how closely we came to go

on of the cliff last time they're taking much more active role i think the way i'd like to describe his business leaders have come to washington to. require a minimum order to set a minimum height standard. for the ride of the fiscal cliff they want to make sure that members of either party who are speaking out are as close as possible to simpson bowles talk about real cuts talk about real revenue there's just much more of an ownership of the process this time. did you catch that liz he said there seems more of an ownership of the process this time and he wasn't talking about legislators he was talking about business leaders so typically when you think of ownership you think of you buy something and then it's yours so you know i'm sure he wasn't saying we bought out the entire political process so that we own it but he's essentially saying that we have so much influence now that we feel a sense of ownership over these talks eliminate any oh it yeah we own this talk so even though business forward claims that they themselves are not advocating for

anything in particular they are just a medium that allows business owners to speak with senior white house officials other government officials their advocacy is certainly on behalf of the government getting to say what they'd like to say you know it's interesting because we see this strong relationship between the obama administration and this group of businesses some of the biggest businesses in the u.s. . yet it was seen like during the campaign by a lot of them were in support of mitt romney at least you know mitt romney made himself out to be the business guy the one that had the business experience and could kind of back back that right yes he was the business guy and barack obama was the radical redistributionist or something like that but even even that's that's kind of what a lot of republicans were saying barack obama was all these pretty good to big business i mean in two thousand they versus john mccain it was barack obama who was wreaking reaping in all of the bounty from wall street so i think that

a huge takeaway here is that big businesses are pretty bipartisan and they know how to play the market and they know essentially you can't bet the farm on one group so you see a lot of big business is donating equal amounts essentially canceling out their donations by donating equal amounts to democrats and republicans a lot of the time because they essentially see no matter who wins we want ownership over that process r.h.l. really interesting even telling us all about it that way. r.t. producer rachel carinthia looks like surveillance these days just keeps getting more advantage so we are learning government officials are installing high powered audio surveillance systems to buses across the country take a lot of harding's the daily that a high definition cameras as well as sophisticated audio surveillance systems being installed on public transit bus has six of them and so far officials have approved nearly five point nine million dollars in contracts to install the devices on over

three hundred fifty buses and trollies in san francisco a lot of arming of homeland security is funding the program in baltimore and concord north carolina also have the cameras with microphones onboard and several other cities are looking to install them so does this make us safer and what does it mean for your privacy michael brecker a reporter for the daily joined me earlier with more on this technology and how it all works there's nothing terribly sophisticated about the devices themselves these are audio microphones attached to the surveillance cameras that many transit riders are already well accustomed to seeing all over the place done not just in buses and trolleys but but even in city streets these things of proliferated since nine eleven. and they're attached to devices and simply record store transmit the audio along with. traditional video

surveillance footage that people are used to seeing. interesting and can you tell us about why. san francisco has has them on hundreds of their buses what exactly is the goal of having this technology onboard their bus as well transit officials will will tell you different things including protecting the safety of the driver. sorting out complaints from passengers that sort of thing. privacy experts have different concerns that they when went with other sorts of technologies that they were all similar with and some that are in development so much as racial recognition software g.p.s. devices and number of other technologies on the market already or are coming to market that there's going to lead us down one step closer to two tracking individuals. so those of citizens in. not just

you know connecting their movements to the things that they say which is traditionally been held to a different standard by the courts. you know people are used to having cameras you know when they go into a convenience store even on buses having cameras that record what you're doing but having the audio of their record their conversations what does that mean in terms of people that are concerned about their privacy i mean does it kind of just take it take it out a step further well the privacy law experts i spoke to said that there's. a different dimension it's one thing to be able to see someone moving around it's a different thing to be able to if you're with their work or say and so i mean at this point you know we're seeing surveillance getting more advanced and we've been reporting a lot about how they're in advance surveillance everything that they're coming out

with at this point is there any rules or regulations that to state how the information recovered using this technology how it can be used and doesn't set any limits. the those laws remain to be tested in the courts in a process that will go on for quite some time i mean to underscore the point of how this is different think about a person watching this broadcast that we're doing right here right now they can see your face they can see my face our mouths are moving but audio is a completely different dimension. and i was a reporter for the daily michael breck and we're going to leave it off there but for more of the stories we covered make sure to check out our youtube channel and that is youtube dot com slash our team america you can also check out our web site that is r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall for now have a great night.